Reports are going around that the Department of Justice is moving to remove the Paramount Consent Decrees, which originally went into effect back in 1948 following the United States versus Paramount Pictures over antitrust violations where the big motion picture studios were running monopolies and anti-competitive measures such as block-booking and circuit dealing.
According to JDSupra, the Department of Justice feel as if the Paramount Consent Decrees have served their purpose, with the outlet reporting…
“In a speech before the ABA, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim explained that the DOJ’s position is that the Consent Decree has served its purpose. Given the passage of time and the effect of the decree itself, he said, there is no way that the studios could reinstate the horizontal cartel of the late 1940s. Vertical integration, moreover, is no longer subject to blanket prohibition under current antitrust law. As a further factor in the DOJ’s decision, Delrahim pointed to the changes in the theatrical exhibition business that have been wrought by streaming services.”
For those of you who are unfamiliar with what sort of effects this could have on the movie industry and the distribution market at large, YouTuber John Campea does a breakdown of the potential consequences and how it would alter the landscape of film distribution.
For those of you who want a simple realistic situation of what this could mean, just imagine that for Captain Marvel 2 more people than ever are completely ambivalent toward the film. Now imagine that Disney has done the projections and they have another film on the horizon that is bound to be a surefire hit. What they could do is force the movie theater chains to book Captain Marvel 2 across all their available blocks during a set amount of time, with the promise that in doing so they could they have access to their other highly popular film set to debut.
Alternatively, this could affect a lot of smaller distribution companies who produce indie films that occasionally come to the multiplex theaters. If someone like Disney or Paramount decided to backroom deal where they threaten that their latest super hero fanfare won’t be allowed at that theater chain unless they fill up certain booking slots, then it could result in smaller films being pushed out of the distribution chain altogether from certain theaters.
However, the Department of Justice claims that this is unlikely to happen given the change in times, but perhaps this hasn’t happened because the laws have still been in effect. In fact, we’re looking at lots of unchecked anti-competitive behavior from Big Tech right now, so much so that Google, Twitter, and Facebook are literally organizing to rig the 2020 elections yet no one is doing anything about it.
Believing that major studios like Disney, Universal, or Paramount won’t monopolize the landscape as soon as possible is foolhardy thinking at best, or at worst a sign that politicians are trying to help agenda-driven studios foist their propaganda onto the populace by allowing them to monopolize the market.
(Thanks for the news tip Blair)
(Main image courtesy of Captain Tate)